We have added a Gift Upgrades feature that allows you to gift an account upgrade to another member, just in time for the holiday season. You can see the gift option when going to the Account Upgrades screen, or on any user profile screen.

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 14 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

You can find the Game Details in the first post of the Maintenance Thread. If any changes occur in the game settings or rules, I shall post them in that thread, and edit that post.

Please wait until your team leader/administrator/scribe has reserved a couple of top posts in this thread for game admin information. Then post here to let your team know you have arrived.

Fourth set (played by Dhoom through 1160 BC):
We discussed the upcoming wonder building micro in a lot of detail. Exploration continued and we met the eastern AIs and also build the GLH for a modest increase in income. Tech order was masonry--wheel--pottery--mysticism (partial). http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10897337&postcount=1201 (plus a few of the posts before that).

Fifth set (played by LC through 875 BC):
We discussed the MM for building the Pyramids. We also debated and ultimately decided to make a very late push for the Oracle. We were unfortunately beaten to it by one turn, but we did complete the Pyramids. Tech order was mysticism--poly--priesthood. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10928474&postcount=1425

Northern witches:
Will OB at cautious
Cannot bribe to declare at cautious vs. cautious team

Eastern witches:
Will NOT OB at cautious
Cannot bribe to declare at cautious vs. cautious team
Asoka = Toku

Monty = Mansa

(from ZPV post 1239)
Ghengis has -4 against both of them, which means they've both had >=5 turns of Buddhism. That means Asoka definitely is Toku in disguise.
Ragnar can be (Bismark, De Gaulle, FDR, Genghis, Kublai, Lincoln, Mao, Napoleon, Shaka, Sitting Bull, Victoria, Willem) based on that -1 of religion and refusal to open borders, and has had Buddhism for between 5 and 9 turns.

Here is our discussion with some "snips" to keep relevant info for this game. You have to read from bottom to top

Spoiler:

Mitchum
08-03-2011
In the test below, are you suggesting that we settle our first city to capture the oasis? Or is it city #2 that is settled there?

LC
08-03-2011
I`d be interested in seeing how fast we can get ALpha on ths type of run:
AH-writing-(TW)-Alpha
wkr-warrior-settler (settle Oasis¡seafood, grow to p2 asap then oasis+max hammers on wb, then wkr or settler)-library (maxhammers)-GS=>Academy

I´m thinking the BW bline will be hard to match except for the extra techs before writing, because new cities also give beakers. SO the question is hwo much faster does BW REX and does it matter since we hit a happy cap pretty soon. The writing beeline gets us calendar or other happies sooner.

I´m also thinking that we want to war asap and take out as many AIs as quickly as possible. And go for the erkon strategy of gettng about 20 cities asap. BW bline and GLH might help that.

So our first turn shuld start by defogging to optimize the warrior move, then the first 15t somehow need to give us as much info about our next city as possible. IF we can find a food settler pump (AH resources), then maybe we can beeline writing etc.

bbp
08-01-2011
Regarding initial moves:
Good point on the settler move. Perhaps we do that first and see whether it changes anything about the warrior move. Are we south or north? neil seems to have mixed up forest types a bit.

ZPV
07-31-2011
Thanks LC

bbp - by stacking overflow from a warrior and settler, you can arrange for the library to be finished in about 6 turns without BW. Running two scientists, production without BW for chopping will be low-ish - probably it will be best to eke out the second settler during that time, with the worker building a road to its site to speed up the settling date - but we'll be a few turns above the BW route which needs the extra beakers and worker. I'm sure we'll know more about just how much we want to focus on research when we see the save.

LC
07-30-2011
We'll need to fog-gaze the Real Save to think about T0 movements, e.g., War-1SE could reveal only 3-4 tiles or a few more, depending on whether we gaze hills. War-1SW is a possibility if we gaze some hills to the SW.

Moving the settler 1W reveals 5 tiles still allowing settling 1W on T0 or 1N on T1, so that's a no brainer.

bbp
07-30-2011
I'm finding that there's a significant production strain in the T30-50 era. Library without BW is quite slow and gets slower with 2 Sci, but whipping is also tricky with at least 4 decent tiles to work (5 if you chop-mine the GH). And, BW early means no Pottery or Wtg for some time.

Oracle CS seems difficult at best without a gold or gems. We'll need to make significant sacrifices.

Tested 1N. Oasis makes early research faster, but there's also less for a worker to do without the cow pasture. Feels a touch slower overall.

ZPV
07-30-2011
Some more thoughts to add to the mix:

Mining without BW doesn't make much sense. If our worker doesn't have anything better to do than mine a plains hill, then we shouldn't be building a second one at that point, for sure.

AH-Wheel-Pottery-Writing matches up well with tech prereq bonuses and puts a crab city out with a trade route to catch up on research.

I don't think there will be horses in our fat cross, because it makes cheap early rushes (the 2500BC catch the AI with one archer in its capital while the others are escorting its settler kind) way too easy.
So I think I agree 1W will be best.

Next question: what information, that we can get on turn 0, could possibly change our minds on this?

Edit: Random Personalities just means that each AI acts like a leader chosen randomly (with a bias against duplicates) from the list of all leaders. We should be able to track it relatively easily.

bbp
07-30-2011
1N is a valid test. It's better for early commerce with oasis. The cow is a great production tile, though. It's your third tile while growing. There's a chance we get 1-2 FP's by going 1N, I guess. It also forces the crab city to 1N of crab, which might be poor. Hard to say.

ZPV
07-30-2011
No - there wasn't a hint. Just wishful thinking.

How likely is it that 1W contains copper or (especially) horses? If it does, then 1N is just strictly better than 1W - it gets *much* better research due to working an extra 2-commerce tile from the year dot, and the resource would give it similar production.

bbp
07-30-2011
Are you joining us?

What do you mean by "barbs already owning it"? Was there a hint of some sort that I missed?

ZPV
07-29-2011
Hi everyone.

I've done some testing on my own test save (reflected E-W to distinguish from the real save).

I still need to test 1W - I did do starts for 1N, in place and 1E, and found that having the plains cow makes it much easier to build several warriors while growing and explore the area properly, which I think will be more important than the 1-2 extra turns of research that 1N got. I'll take a look at worker turns to see how much the extra improvement required (for 1W) costs. Probably enough to delay mining/BW/Wheel until after Writing. 1E just didn't have enough food.

I don't think an oracle slingshot short of CS or lightbulbing a cheap tech early make too much sense on Emperor - hopefully the former will be taken out of our hands by the barbs already owning the oracle, saving the gamble of when the AI will build it.

LC
07-29-2011
Good testing, guys!

Without the CS slingshot, the math bulb is dubious at best.

Maybe a (wheel)/writing beeline w/max REX to T50 will look only slightly less than bbp's test but give more research with more commerce tiles worked. I don't see any need to chop now.

Oasis is a good tile for a second or third city, possibly.

Mitchum
07-29-2011
The Oasis is a decent tile since it doesn't need to be improved. However, we'll need food in our capital more than a "pre-improved" tile. We can capture the Oasis with another city. It will have a decent tile to work giving the workers time to catch up.

shyuhe
07-29-2011
I had assumed we would settle 1W as the sheep >>> Oasis.

Do we want to figure out a scouting pattern for our start?

bbp
07-29-2011
"If so, we could play out the first turns until AH is learned and THEN start our testing."
Yes, that's what I was saying earlier. I think we should just get consensus on this, pick a turnplayer and go for it within a couple of days of save being released. That said, I agree with LC that testing right now is good. It's nice to get a feel for worker/tech timing and all.

Are we right in assuming 1W, though? Anyone disagree?

Mitchum
07-29-2011
I "think" that settling 1W, AH and worker are agreeable to everyone. If so, we could play out the first turns until AH is learned and THEN start our testing. This will give us an idea of the surrounding area, proximity of AI, etc. It will also ensure that our testing is more related to the map from the actual game. It won't be perfect, but it will be better than spending tons of time testing now only to change course once we find some killer 2 gold 3 corn site.

Regarding my testing so far, I do like the worker -> worker (after growing to 2 pops) start, an early-ish library to leverage the Philosophical trait and learning The Wheel fairly early to establish trade routes, speed up movement and give the two workers something to do while waiting for cities 2 and 3 to be settled. I also prefer a focus on earlier REX as opposed to a focus on science and a VERY early GS. I'm not sold on bulbing the GS on Math yet as a very early academy can be quite strong.

bbp
07-28-2011
I ran two tests yesterday. One was BW first and settler spam. Got 3 cities, 2 workers and halfway to another settler and another worker by T50. Only finished Myst, without Wtg. Another, I went for instant library (AH-Wtg, skip settler), while growing to 6. That ended up with a GS on T50, but second city only T52, and no second worker. Would have had CS just before 1000 BC with academy (not Math bulb), but awful expansion.

The problem with this kind of testing is what Mitchum pointed out. If we find gold or gems with the second city, all research pre-calculation is out the window.

I got the GS on T56, 3 turns after learning BW. He bulbed Math, making all chops Math-enhanced.

There was a lot for one worker to do, so there were several turns where citizens were working unimproved tiles.

I stopped the test on T61 (1560 BC) because the Oracle was built in a distant land before I could even start it...

It felt more awkward than the two worker opening as the worker was always a step or two behind where he needed to be, expecially once the second city was founded. BTW, there's also the question of which tiles to improve first between Corn, Cow and Sheep. Sheep should be first since it is 5F1C but it's a tough call between Cow (3F3H) and Corn (5F). Food and growth didn't seem to be the issue since we were growing before we could work improved tiles, so Cow before Corn is probably best, especially when building workers/settlers.

What are people's thoughts on the GLH? Should we consider not being so aggressive with the Oracle (MC or CoL) and trying for the GLH? In any event, I think this is a clear AH opening. It will be hard to decide exactly what to do until we see more land. Starting with Fishing makes coastal cities attractive.

Mitchum
07-28-2011
The initial two workers had plenty to do (I only built one more from city #2 for a total of 3 at 1000 BC paired with 4 cities), although they were stalling chops several turns until Math came it. Without The Wheel, they would have had a lot less to do. With worker -> warrior (two?) -> settler -> library and researching AH -> Writing, we may be able to speed up research a bit at the expense of REX and tile improvement. After Writing it would be good to research The Wheel, Mining, BW and Mysticism, but I'm not sure in which order. Mysticism is good because monuments give us +1 happy (Charismatic) and allow us to settle with resources outside the inner ring. BW will be critical for both slavery and chopping.

Keep in mind that our research could be significantly faster in the real game if there is a commerce resource and/or we can get early OB with foreign trade routes with an AI or two.

I don't have time to test it right now, but maybe later. Any thoughts on tech order after Writing?

I forgot to mention that I lost the first exploring warrior at poor odds. We should keep this idea in mind for the real game. If things in our plan are so tight that we can't built a warrior to three, we could get caught with our pants down. Barb archers showed up at about T50.

LC
07-28-2011
Good stuff, Mitchum. What was your feeling on the initial 2 wkrs? Would it be better to grow faster? That CS date is impossibly slow, which means our research might be also. What about AH-wtg...building only one wkr and growing faster sooner, so we can work more coins and get the library built a lot sooner?

The Oracle was built in a distant land on T77 (950 BC) and I was 5 turns away from CoL and the Oracle (1 chop planned). I did not use any commerce tiles (e.g. silver, gold or silver) but did keep two scientists hired non-stop in the capital (GS#2 due on T80). If we have resource tiles in our game, we could likely pull in CoL by several turns.

By this time (950 VC), 3 AI already have Alphabet. We could use Math and CoL (once we learn it) to backfill techs. Of course, in this test game we have 5 AI (at least) on our land mass, which may not be the case in the real game.

I think we need to keep the GLH on the table depending on the layout of the map and how many coastal city locations we're likely to settle/capture. Doing this may mean that we have to sneak in Sailing and Masonry somewhere, which would likely take the CS sling off the table.

shyuhe
07-28-2011
@Dhoom - we've discussed taking philosophy from the Oracle in previous games. I think I proposed it in 11 as a tool to help the GP generation. I forgot why we ditched the idea though... It's an easier Oracle than civil service since you don't need math but it is still a pretty commerce-heavy Oracle tech.

Dhoom
07-28-2011
Just to throw it out there: one idea from last game that I kind of wanted to try at some point (not necessarily in this SGOTM) was taking Philosophy from The Oracle. It seems to be much more efficient than trying to Lightbulb Philosophy, as you can skip the pre-requisite Lightbulbing techs.

If we're Philosophical and are going to be hiring Specialists anyway, then why not make them Pacifism-enhanced Specialists?

In that way, we could either skip a fast Great Scientist, or, if we get one, could Settle it or turn it into an Academy.

I don't think that I'll have time to do any testing until this weekend, but I'll see if I can fit in some time to try some things then.

We are apparently playing as Lincoln (Philosophical, Charismatic), according to what others have said, in case that info wasn't known to you.

Charismatic DOES mean +1 Happiness for an additional whip and +1 Happiness per horizontally-expanded-to City.

While planning a cool tech to take from The Oracle may be a top-tier strategy, nothing stops us from using a still-pretty-decent REX strategy, if that appears to give us better results.

LC
07-26-2011
@shyuhe: So, it's not (not at all) about determining how we're going to use our GP or what we're gong to slingshot, if anything. It's just about testing some variants.

We could also test an wkr-settler variant, with AH-mng-BW (+TW somewhere) and then Sailing + GLH, since there are plenty of chops on the coast.

The more we test now, the faster we play later. Slow play = people losing interest.

LC
07-26-2011
Let me try to articulate my thinking better. First, what I see is this:

1. The sheep, cows, and corn are separated by many worker movements and we're talking Normal speed to compound that.
2. We have a ton of forests to chop.
3. We are philosophical, so we can get GPs twice faster.
4. We don't have (so far) a commerce resource tile for fast research.
5. We start with Agri and want to research AH first, which puts us right up against writing, enabling libraries + 2 sci = a jump from ~12-15bpt to 20bpt plus the early GS.
6. 1W would make a decent bureau capital, having hammers and a few river tiles.

Okay. So I'm thinking that BW surely gives us fast settlers, no doubt there, but BW is a huge chunk out of any slingshot, especially without a commmerce tile. Then I'm thinking, if we bulb math just after finishing BW (must faster at 20bpt) and having roaded our paths to city sites with 2 wkrs, we get the math/chop bonus super-early and now can crank out settlers rapidly and they settle instantly.

So then I wonder to myself, well, just how much earlier do we settle our cities with the AH-BW beeline? Is it really soooooo much earlier than the math bulb route? If not, then we've managed to get quite an early bureau slingshot AND REX.

In any case, on Emporer with 8 AIs, we need to be careful with the ORacle, if we're going to build it at all.

shyuhe
07-26-2011
@LC: I'm not saying that I'm opposed to testing out some opening variations here. But I think trying to determine what if anything we will use a GS on at this stage of the game is too difficult because it involves too many unknown parameters.

Dhoom's plan is interesting, but given that we have no information on the map type, isn't it a bit risky to forgo the early worker techs in hopes of a quick alpha bulb? Also, that shuts off certain bulb options in the middle of the tech tree so I'm a little hesitant to try such a plan. It's novel, but I don't know what it gains us in our current situation other than a few cheap techs.

Perhaps a better way of phrasing the issue that I'm stumped over is, what exactly are we thinking of oracling from a metagame standpoint? Is it CS? Or something else?

Also, a total aside but I think we're pretty far south given the tree types.

Mitchum
07-26-2011
In general, I think delaying BW too long (like until after Alpha) is a bad move. I agree that whipping before a granary isn't ideal, but with three positive food resources in the capital (if settling 1W), we'll be able to re-grow quickly even without a granary. Whipping settlers greatly increases our REX. Since this is a crowded map, we may be in a rush to settle several city sites before we lose them to the AI. BW also exposes Copper. An axe rush may be in order this game...

LC
07-26-2011
As far as advanced planning goes, imo no one should EVER even hit <enter> without considering whether we need to change our plans, given any new info from that particular turn.

So the point of doing some testing now is to get a feel for some variations in advance so that we can play faster when the save arrives.

One of the most crucial facts we gained in SG12 was when bcool discovered we can't clear fallout in AI land. That came from initial testing. In SG13, no one played a game out to the end to give us such info, which might have cost us some turns.

Optimizing the workers versus tech path is crucial early on. I don't have a precise feel for when the second worker gets done (if we even build it immediately) and how that plays with growth and tech. Maybe the best turns out to be:

AH-TW-Mining

Dhoom's math bline variant also warrants testing. The BW variant surely should be compared against the writing variant to compare settling times, because it's clearly slower on research.

shyuhe
07-26-2011
I think we will need to play at least 15-20 turns into the game before we can figure out how we'll deal with the Oracle issue, and what if anything to use an early GS on. It's just so highly land dependent.

Good catch Dhoom - I think you're right that the Wizard is a unit based on that text.

bbp
07-26-2011
It's a land start on a crowded map. I would prefer to play the initial TS before deciding on something as major as library-GS before settler. We obviously start with worker and AH, so we have at least 13t to play through quickly. More likely 20t, if we just agree on Mining next. Quality and availability of city sites and AI proximity both matter in these decisions, IMO.

Dhoom
07-25-2011
In regards to The Wheel versus Bronze Working, it will be nice to have Trade Route connections as soon as we settle. Whether we go for Diplo or whether we go for Airships, we'll still need a lot of techs. So, keeping our research rate relatively high helps a lot, which comes hand-in-hand with getting those Trade Routes up early.

With a non-Coastal capital, we'll be relying on some Roads to get the Trade Routes up.

It can certainly be argued that getting a Settler out 2 turns faster from a 20 Hammer Forest Chop can be mostly negated by walking over top of a couple of pieces of Road.

If we delay Bronze Working, then there is another alternative: beeline Math. "What?" you say in reply.

Well, a Great Scientist can Lightbulb Math, but if we know Math, it will Lightbulb Alphabet (worth double-checking, but here's my tech preferences list).

Given that there will be 8 AIs (regardless of whether one is named "The Wizard of Oz"), we will almost certainly have some early trading partners. Bronze Working is usually easy to get in trade (as are Fishing and Animal Husbandry, for that matter).

Self-teching Writing -> Math instead of Writing -> Bronze Working would allow us to get Alphabet from a Lightbulb and Bronze Working in trade. Think about it.

Dhoom
07-25-2011
If the Wizard of Oz were a Civ, then we'd get informed about it dying.

Instead, neilmeister said the following, which really sounds like he is talking about a unit dying:

Rule is simple, he must be dead before you win.

If he dies without you knowing, I will let you know, purely so you don't delay your victory looking for him.

Still, I agree that we shouldn't treat an assumption as a 100% certainty.

LC
07-25-2011
The point of bulbing Math is to get better chops and the CS-slingshot. So I'd prefer roading to chopping with BW after Writing, if it makes any sense. Poprushing before we have a granary is dubious except that it get the hammers sooner. Obviously, BW first gets our settlers out sooner, but seriously slows down the GS and research in general. Further, I suspect early BW gets the settlers out before roads speed them up, so some turns are lost to movement costs, right?

bbp
07-25-2011
Ok, I tried hitting a Drill4/Wood3/etc Machine Gun with Airships, followed by suicide cannons. No chance. After the Airship damage, the cannons don't even inflict any injury. Artillery, on the other hand, stands no chance against Mech Inf. Could be tricky, if it really is a super-unit. My feeling is that it's a civ, though.

bbp
07-25-2011
^^ Also Rifling, plus prerequisites for it, which we'll have skipped. mdy makes a good point, though. Early dom means giving up research well before such techs. Might be worthwhile testing mid-game siege against advanced promoted units. I'm not sure how that works, TBH. Then again, we don't actually know that the Wiz is one barb unit, either.

If we don't find the Wizard early, rushing to Optics for exploration would probably be worthwhile. We wanna know what we have to face while there are still some different strategic paths to go.

Edit: xpost

shyuhe
07-25-2011
I didn't notice the 8 AI part. I think the Wizard may be a civ after all, as it doesn't make sense to stuff so many AI on a standard map otherwise. Maybe he's in an area that's block off by mountains so that you need paratroopers to attack him? Either way, I think an early-ish beeling towards airships to scout out the map to find the Wizard (assuming we don't find him sooner) will be critical to a fast finish.

I've tried reaching out to ZPV. I'll hold off on hitting up Sleepless until after I hear back from ZPV as I don't want to grow the roster too large. I think having a smaller team makes for better participation. And yes, I've warned him about our tendency to hit high post counts

shyuhe
07-25-2011
I think airships combined with suicide siege can reduce unit health far enough that an army of maces will have a shot. Unless the unit has a lot of first strikes, in which case we'll have to use knights. Either way, I think physics is more than enough. If necessary, artillery is only two techs away (artillery + steel I think).

Dhoom
07-24-2011
1W is a Plains River square. So, if there is a Horse/Copper/Iron Resouce there, settling on it would at least give us 2 Hammers in our City Centre. We would miss out on a "super" square i.e. a Resource + 1 Commerce from a River, but we would gain a Forest relative to settling just about anywhere else. It seems like these things would make for a fair trade-off.

1E is a Plains Hills River square. Had the additional squares not been revealed, many teams might have settled there. Seeing the nearby land, though, makes it look like a very poor settling location: dry Corn, Oasis, and 1 Desert Hills square = a terrible capital.

Without having tested it, I could see a lot of value in going for 2 Workers. With 8 AIs crowding a Standard-sized map, it will be nice to REX to maybe 3 or 4 Cities then likely go to war against a neighbour. With only 1 early Worker, it will take a long time to get our Resources improved and to Chop a lot of the Forests.

bbp
07-24-2011
Yeah, I took two workers from your suggestion (built one a.s.a. siz 2) and it feels nice. Need early BW or Wheel for it, though. Otherwise, you're done improvements before the second worker's active. With a couple of early chops, it feels like the second worker pays for itself by the first settler + a bit.

LC
07-24-2011
I think we settle based on what we see, not what might be. The warrior will have to move somewhere, maybe to the SE, the settler could go 1W to expose more tiles across the lake. We need food, that's for sure.

@shyuhe: The idea is to test whether 2 wkrs works better or not. I'm thinking our capital grows too quickly for only one worker. Also, on Normal, we want to build roads asap for settlers, etc., and we have lots of chops. We'll need other workers soon too for our settlers, but hopefully we can steal them.

bbp
07-24-2011
I agree that we'll need to delay deciding on VC. That's what I meant with my "highest pop at 1 AD" comment. In SGOTM 11, the special conditions proved to be easy to satisfy. That kind of super-quick diplo win doesn't necessarily go with needing arty or better to beat the Wiz, though. Also, needing deep research requires a big empire. Anyway, I hope this doesn't prove as anti-climactic as the barbs in 11.

Did a test map. It's just Fractal. Didn't bother fog-gazing - feel free to tinker. He artificially revealed the entire row from sheep to crab, column from crab to desert hill, cow tile and the two lake tiles.

8 AI is a lot.

mdy
07-24-2011
If better units than trebs/maces are needed to kill the Wizard of Oz ( I think this is very likely) I doubt going for an early conquest/domination will be the quickest way to victory as it will kill our economy too much. Diplo is a possibility, the trouble is it won't give us the better units we need if we make a beeline for mass media, nor would we be able to trade for them from the AI. We will need to keep our victory condition open for a while I think.

There is almost certainly a strategic resource (probably horses) 1 tile west, so we should expect to lose the production bonus if we go for the sheep.

Dhoom
07-23-2011
So, in the case where we do require Astronomy for our chosen Victory Condition (say that the Wizard unit is only reachable via Galleons), which Victory Condition or Conditions are likely to be the fastest?

bbp
07-23-2011
If dom/conq is doable without Astro, I think they beat diplo. Depends on setup. I know we're not going culture or space.

I'm also very certain, after reading what neilmeister has said on the subject, that the "Wizard" is a Barb unit and is very likely a Machine Gun or other high-tech unit. Hopefully, he has done enough testing to ensure that such a unit won't just disappear after a number of turns (I have seen the Barbs disband World Built units in a game where players are suppsed to use the World Builder since they play as "gods" for the poor "mortal" sucker that has to play through the constantly re-World-Built game.)

Click to expand...

As I posted in the thread (I don't think it's a big secret), I'm pretty sure a diplo win will be the fastest VC for this game. So we'll want to farm lots of GS's for the SM--physics--electricity line and take radio from liberalism. I'm not sure if it's faster to do this by hard research or by using sushi powered cities. The Ducks beat us in SGOTM 11 (or was it 12?) using more land and sushi but I'm not sure that sushi by itself is necessarily faster for getting to the UN.

I think the Wizard is a unit as well.

1W gives up an oasis for a sheep so it sounds like a pretty good trade for me. It probably also settles us on a resource but that's not much of a loss.

A CS oracle would be nice but since we don't have any commerce tiles, I think LC's plan of bulbing math is pretty viable. Do we really need two workers though? I guess our two best food tiles are on opposite ends and two workers will let us chop faster...

Without TW, Alphabet on t51 isn't too constrained - it might be possible to push it down to t50. With TW, I can just about force it onto t53.

I'll try and compare it to a research-empahsis 2-city AH-BW-Alpha start

Click to expand...

I just ran a similar test and got Alphabet (+Wheel) ~55. This only makes sense if we meet 3 other AI early on and they all know each other.

However, I'm not a big fan of skipping BW for a few reasons. First, if we skip Mining we can't build mines (obviously). Second, without BW, no chopping, no Slavery and no Copper. I saw a barb archer on T38. Our warriors just won't cut it if we get unlucky with a barb archer or two spawning nearby. Our capital is food heavy, which screams for Slavery. Finally, it feels quite a bit slower with respect to REX.

I do like having our second city being coastal for the GLH gambit, but I hope we can find something better than just an Oasis + Crab.

Checking in but I'm checking in remotely from vacation, so I won't be able to help out with testing yet.

If I recall correctly, the argument was that moving 1W (but not settling and not moving anywhere with our remaining 1/2 movement point) would give us more visibility and would still allow us to move to 1N of our initial location, which was probably the other main spot that we considered. Given that situation, I'm up for moving 1W and doing some fog-gazing from there, in order to decide where to move our Warrior.

Moving our Warrior 1SE is pointless, but moving the Warrior SW then SW or NW then NW might be viable if we don't decide to settle at the 1W location on Turn 0.

1W SHOULD allow us to see across the Lake, but trying this fact out in a test game first would probably be wise, just to make sure that we gain something by moving 1W. Obviously, if I am wrong about being able to see over the Lake, then moving 1W would not be the obvious move (i.e. if moving 1W does not reveal anything, then don't move there).

I just ran a similar test and got Alphabet (+Wheel) ~55. This only makes sense if we meet 3 other AI early on and they all know each other.

However, I'm not a big fan of skipping BW for a few reasons. First, if we skip Mining we can't build mines (obviously). Second, without BW, no chopping, no Slavery and no Copper. I saw a barb archer on T38. Our warriors just won't cut it if we get unlucky with a barb archer or two spawning nearby. Our capital is food heavy, which screams for Slavery. Finally, it feels quite a bit slower with respect to REX.

I do like having our second city being coastal for the GLH gambit, but I hope we can find something better than just an Oasis + Crab.

Click to expand...

At this point, I assume that 1SW of the crab is the place for that city - it can then share the corn with the capital, keep maintenance at -2gpt until it grows to size 3, and pick up the desert hill which I expect to have a metal on it.

I'll try out some BW starts. I'm not remotely upset at not having mines, but chopping will be very useful - the question is if it's enough to make up for the extra worker that's needed early, and the extra techs needed to research by hand. I'm not sure we'd actually use Slavery too much before 2000BC - well, we would in the crab city, for sure, but in the capital having 5 citizens busy doing other things (working a food tile or amassing GPP), there isn't too much room.

There are 8 AIs, so we'll "probably" see several of them early on. I'll do a few tests in debug mode to see when they start having useful techs like Mathematics available for trade.

My last thought is, if it turns out we settled on Horses, then all bets are off. A cheese rush has got to be the best option in that case, with the small window in which the AI tends to leave its capital defended by only one archer.

Here's the test save I've been using. Note, the sheep is on the river, as in the screenshot.

Without TW, Alphabet on t51 isn't too constrained - it might be possible to push it down to t50. With TW, I can just about force it onto t53.

I'll try and compare it to a research-empahsis 2-city AH-BW-Alpha start

Click to expand...

Confirming the first statement, with careful tile management, Alphabet+Worker#2 both finish on t51, or we can sacrifice either 35 hammers on the worker or 20 on the worker and 10 on the work boat to finish it on t50. The t51 version is my preferred option at the moment - research feels so slow in the BW start that you don't have anything to build while growing and waiting on techs.

We won't be able to trade for Mathematics for a long time, but can pick up Iron Working and possibly Monarchy in the ~t60 range.